The Daily Beast Podcast - Amy Klobuchar: Forget Trump’s Election Rants. Biden Has This

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

“It's so funny,” Molly Jong-Fast tells Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “There's been so much sexist talk about women [in politics] being too emotional and being too sensitive. And then we have an entire party held hostage by the president's moods.”  Klobuchar laughs in response: “Exactly. I think it was John Bolton that said that we just don't have time to live through seven stages of the president's grief. That is exactly what's happening.” “Even when presidents have lost elections,” the senator adds, “they have led, they have had to deal with last-minute crises. And this guy is not doing it. I don't think we should be surprised, but the fact that he is not leading and trying to demolish our democracy at the same time and tarnish the reputation of good people like [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] Chris Krebs is just an unbelievable trio of evil.”  But don’t worry, the senator says on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. Despite all the histrionics and the wackadoodle press conferences and the late-night tweets, this presidency is over. “It is getting more and more clear that there's no other paths. And at some point [the Republicans] are going to have to allow for this transition.” It’s not even like the goal of the Trumpists is to win, despite all their quasi-fascist, overturn-the-election talk, says Rick Wilson. “The goal is to sow dissension, the goal is to build chaos. The goal is to ensure that the Trump brand for the next four years still is able to grift off of their email list and suck down rube dollars: ‘they can steal our election, but they can't steal our pride.’”  And what should Biden do, once he’s in the Oval and Trump is still doing his authoritarian wannabe thing? And his enablers are back in the senate? There have been some leaks out of Bidenworld that Joe is disinclined towards retribution. “I think they need to recognize that playing by the Marquess of Queensberry rules and playing nice” won’t work, Rick says. “I think Lindsey Graham needs to be under investigation by the ethics committee. The guy’s involved in outright attempts to fraudulently manipulate the election. It’s just crazy.”  Molly isn’t so sure. Quoting Masha Gessen, she says: “it's really important that the president doesn't look like he's doing that [taking retribution against Trump], because democratic norms are so important. Instead, we have to narrate the experience of the people who've gone through Trumpism.”  Which is another way of saying this is—hopefully, please God—almost over. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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start your period of month in Shopify. coms bar records. Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit and editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, bestselling author, and full-time troublemaker.

We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep all. are kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Hi, Rick Wilson. Hello, Molly John Fast. So that Rudy press conference at noon,

he blew the lid off. The global conspiracy to allow the Illuminati-controlled Bigfoot lizard people hybrids to take over the earth. We all know that our fate now rests only in one man, and that's a man whose hair dyed drips down the side of his face during a sweaty, screechy, bloviating press conference.

If you haven't seen that picture of dear listeners, I think I'll have Jesse put it in the show notes, but I think it needs like a content warning because you will never unsee that shit. It will never leave you. Pretty awful. So, Molly, I mean, wasn't that,

didn't you find that, aren't we reaching some kind of peak with Sidney Powell and Rudy? Blaming it on Hugo Chavez, who's been dead for six. Somehow Hugo Chavez and the Hugo Chavez Kami time machine came back? Back to hack the election.

CNN used the picture of the hair dye dripping down his face too. I mean, that, you know, I don't know. I mean, maybe Hugo Chavez did come back from the dead to hack the election. I mean, it really makes a lot of sense. Well, I mean, look, Hugo Chavez is, of course, the center of their conspiracy theories right now

because it's Venezuela. Sidney Powell today when she's like, Venezuela, Cuba, and perhaps China. I'm like, get the fuck out of here, crazy lady. That woman, readers if you're, listeners if you're not familiar with Sydney Powell,

she has mounted a stellar defense of Michael Flynn for the last three years, which has led to him being liberated. I mean, oh, wait, he's still a federal felon. I mean, for God's sake. Was she always like that? I haven't had a close relationship. relationship with Sidney Powell, but I have always heard that Sidney Powell was crazier than a bag full of

rabid rats. So, I mean, she's just, she's not a person that you would, you would wake up in the morning and think, who's a top flight white shoe litigator to make my case seem as if it's sane and grounded in reality? No, no, with her, it's more, do I want to let the crazy lady talk about, about George Soros? Because, of course, there was, she brought it up, you know. Yeah, no, yeah. They were in a building with an office that has a Soros allied group and I'm like, yes, okay. So basically that what's going on now is the goal here is to try, is Republicans are trying to get the electors to throw out the popular vote and just go with Trump. I mean, that's the goal, right?

Even they recognize what an massive leap it is to do that. The goal is to sow dissension. The goal is to build chaos. the goal is to ensure that the Trump brand for the next four years still is able to grift off of their email list and suck down rub dollars, rub bucks if you will, rub coin from Trump's followers on the MAGA email list because remember folks, the list that was developed for the Trump campaign

is owned not by the Trump campaign and not by the RNC but by Donald John Trump personally. He is going to survive off of the Trump. list and they're going to beat every email to death, they stole the election, but they can't steal our pride. Right, because that's the conservative grift. Yes, it is the, it's not even conservative, it's just pure Trump. I mean, he's just...

Right, but conservative email lists have been for a long time a very good money-making scam. Well, especially the ones that warn against the real dangers we face, Molly. You know, gay, sharia, transgender marriage. It's coming. Right. It's coming. Right. Unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless,

Lee stops it unless Ted Cruz stops it. It's interesting because it's like, clearly Mitch McConnell is just letting Trump do whatever he wants, but the Republican Senate map is really bad in 2022. It is a very grim picture. And the interesting part about 2022 is they recognize that they're going to have to run against Joe Biden. And they're going to run against him ironically on COVID. This is already McConnell's plan, okay, is to slow. down any COVID relief, not let any additional economic relief for COVID pass, slow down staffing the CDC, he's going to be the doctor no of COVID. And what's going to happen is their plan is to take advantage of what they will then describe as a failure of the Biden administration

and the Democrats to do anything about COVID. The irony is, yes, rich and abundant. But I, hopefully the Democrats will recognize that there are ways to have Joe Biden start making phone calls to guys he knows and has friendly relationships with in the Senate. I think the biggest play for Biden on the inside game right now is to find three or four Republican senators and really work the hell out of them. He has a lot of good relationships with Republican senators, but to really work the hell out of the ones he knows. and to start bringing a wedge into this thing. And while McConnell's power is vast, it is not unlimited, especially when you've got a tie ball game there. You know the two most powerful men in Washington are going to be?

Mitt Romney and Joe Manchin. They're going to be the ones who are the swappable tie-breaking votes. I think that's awfully optimistic. Oh, look, I'm not, I'm not little Miss Sunshine here, but I'm just saying if you've got to play, if you're the inside game, that's one of the few plays you've got. But it won't matter anyway. If you're a Democrat, you'll probably have Joe Manchin.

Will you, though? Well, you will, because he just got reelected. I mean, the question is, will you have Mitt or Susan Collins? Or will you have Susan Collins? I don't know if you're hearing my skepticism about Joe Manchin. Yeah. I'm not sure you're hearing my skepticism about Joe Manchin. I think there's a 50% chance he flips and changes parties.

Really, even at this late date? If it means that Mitch McConnell gets 51 votes again, There's nothing. Mitch McConnell will not offer Joe Manchin. Like what? What could he offer him to make him flip? No more frequent flyer, bitch mouse for my boy, Joe. No.

Look, that is a quote from Trumpic Thunder, the American classic. Yeah. I don't know specifically what Joe Manchin loves more than life itself, but Mitch McConnell will find it. So Democrats need to keep an eye on the ball on that. They also need, in the coming months, to extract a price. I know that the official line from Team Biden, is we don't want to prosecute Rudy or prosecute Trump or go after Rudy or any of these other things. I think they need to recognize that playing by the Marcus of Queensberry rules and playing nice,

the Republicans fully expect them to play nice because they're like, you guys don't have the balls, you don't have the guts, you don't have the stones to go and fight with us and really punish. I think they need to. I think Lindsay Graham needs to be under investigation by the ethics committee. The guy's involved in outright attempts to fraudulently manipulate the election. It's just crazy. I mean, I think the thinking is that if you get a really good AG who's independent, they'll do what they do.

And the president shouldn't have anything to do with that. No, he shouldn't have anything to do with that. But the Senate and the House also have a role to play. Right. But, I mean, that has nothing to do with the Biden administration. Well, on paper. I mean, but you don't want to see. I mean, we had Mashagasen do an interview.

and we're talking about how to avoid another autocracy. Like, how do we unravel this? And I think it's important because remember, after Nixon, there were tons of things that the American government did to prevent another Nixon, right? And we're not going to have that because Mitch McConnell is going to stay in power. So he's not going to let any of those things happen. So the question is, how do we as citizens and as the media

try to prevent an autocracy from coming again? And what she said, and I don't know if it's right, is she said it's really important that the president doesn't look like he's doing that because democratic norms are so important, but that it is really important that we narrate the experience and the experience of the people who've gone through Trumpism and also all of the elements of that. I think Masha is very, very brilliant, but I'm a practical fellow. And I know that unless you hurt people in politics, unless you pain is the only teacher, unless you hurt them for what they've done. wrong, they will do more wrong things. Right, but you don't, but it can't be the president doing it. I mean, that's, I'm not arguing that Joe Biden goes out there and says, I announced the Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Rick Wilson.

Right. Yeah, not great. And America, I think we should start one of those White House petitions that I should have the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I promise you that my reign will be cruel and unfair. Nice. We finally found a place for Rick Wilson and a Biden administration that the left will be bad about.

Look, there's only two jobs I want in the Biden administration. One is Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with Unlimited Remet. Two is Witchfinder General. Right. That sounds good. That makes sense. Amy Carney has a piece just now in the Times that says that the president's dumbest

child's wife is planning to run for the South Carolina Senate. North Carolina. North Carolina. Oh, she can't win North Carolina. That's good. Well, it's an open seat. Oh, mm-mm. Democrats have to find someone good. Rick, get on that. I will, uh, Lara Trump running for the Senate in North Carolina. I would be cautious because North Carolina is another one of the states with a blue core

and a whole lot of red around it. And I would further be cautious that she'll be financially competitive with any Democrat. Trumpism is going to spread. It is going to be like Kudzu and we're going to have to go out and burn it down over and over and over and over again and then get goats to eat it off the hills and then round up the shit out of it after that. Is there someone has been talked about for that North Carolina Senate?

I haven't been thinking about it. Believe me, I'm now on the case. Imagine an election cycle where you have like junior running for something and senior running for something and Eric's wife running for something. Imagine. Well, I can easily imagine it.

This is the dynastic nature of the grift, and they're going to amplify and amplify and amplify and amplify. And I wouldn't be surprised if Don Jr. gets a house in Montana or Wyoming or Idaho or a Dakota. A Dakota might be the right place for him. Just to start to find a place where he could run because he's obviously not going to run in New York. Yeah. I think that's a fair assessment. I'm officially starting the rumor that Donald Trump is going to run for mayor of New York after he's done with the presidency.

I'm officially starting that rumor right now. I don't think that's happening. You like that rumor. You're happy with that. It makes you happy. We have the worst mayor ever. So, I mean, would Donald be worse? Yeah, he probably would be. You know, I look back and I think, I used to always think like, who could be worse than the dink?

Nobody could be worse. Oh, wait. It's Bill de Blasio. Bill de Blasio is so much worse than Dickens. It's not even, like, people don't even talk about Dinkins anymore because Bill de Blasio has so obscure of that. So when you worked for Rudy Giuliani, did you ever think you would see whatever that? insane press conference was. And can you also explain to us what the hell that was?

Okay, so there was always a bad Rudy and a good Rudy. But did he ever have brown stuff dripping down his face, or is that? So that is a hair care supplement, I think is the phrase I would use, known as topic. What is that? Apparently, it is some sort of fake hair. Didn't we see Stephen Miller wear that I meet the press once? We did see him wear that I meet the press once. Yeah.

It's essentially like hair in a can polish with hair embedded and glues to your head. That's amazing. Hair and a can. Hair and a can. It's hair in a can.

Hair and a can. So there was always a bad Rudy and there was always a Rudy that could go down like these very dark pathways. And look, there was also a good Rudy in certain moments,

rare moments sometimes, but there was also Rudy who, you know, look, when I worked for him, he was also the guy who without a lot of fuss, if a cop got shot

or a firefighter got hurt, at three in the morning, we'd be at the hospital. But now it's all conspiracy Rudy and crazy Rudy and one last grasp of the spotlight, Rudy. And it's really ugly and it's really pathetic. And no one in that meeting today believed a word they were saying, including Cuckoo Sidney Powell. But here's the story.

What they're trying to accomplish is to shatter the norms of the democratic transfer of power. They're trying to shatter the norms of an America that operates in a way that is based on rules and based on traditions and based on norms because they want more crazy. They want more shit. They want more yelling. They want more lawsuits. They want more bullshit. And they're going to do as much as they can to cause those things.

So it's an ugly thing. This is one more example of Rudy taking his legacy and running it through the shitter. and there's nothing anyone can do to stop that at this point. Well, that's well deserved. I mean, you know, he did it to himself. No, I know, I know. Like, it seems like this is bad for democracy, but won't work. But it might work next time.

Yeah, look, these guys are all now playing a game called, Who's More Authoritarian? They're trying to play the Saddam game. You know, he never really loses. They're trying to play a game of incredible projection, by the way. Right. The whole thing today about, oh, this is just, like Venezuela, yeah, and Trump's fucking Chavez or Maduro.

Yeah. You know, this is not, this is not a man or a team of people around him dedicated, shall we say, to the preservation of the great American democratic tradition. And so I think there's a degree to which we're not going to see a happy ending to this thing at all. What do you mean? They're going to drag this out. These assholes coming from Michigan tomorrow are part of the performative dragging out of this thing. But it's already signed, right? It's already signed. There is a legal function for them to rescind their votes, okay? However, this means another round of lawsuits, another round of bullshit. They're trying to push all of this to the Electoral College Safe Harbor deadline. And if they pass that, then they feel like there's an angle for them to litigate or for them to contest or for them to complain. But I thought Michigan was already certified. The Wayne County situation was still under litigation. That's why these assholes have done this.

well because they're assholes for one thing, but that's why they're playing this particular game. And it's sad and it's pathetic, and it won't work in the end, but as you said, it might work sometime. And they're going to keep playing the game because it's important to remember, we're not talking about Republicans and Democrats anymore. We're talking about people who believe in the American system

and people who believe in a post-democratic authoritarian statism. And they would love to just declare the dear leader will serve forever or until Ivanka wants to take power. Right. And move on from there. These are not people committed to America. They're committed to Donald Trump. That's all they care about now.

It is a kamikaze political cult. Amy Klobuchar is the senior senator of the great state of Minnesota and a former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. It seems to me like this transition is being gumbed up, Like, do you think that Mitch McConnell will ever push Trump to accept it? Or do you think we're just going to go through another two months of this? Well, it may not be Mitch McConnell, but it seems to me if you read the tea leaves, you know, you've got the first you had a group that congratulated Biden.

They were small but mighty with Mitt Wrepton and a few others. Then you had a number of senators who praised Chris Krebs when he got fired, which included Portman and Sass and some others. So to me, this is getting clearer and clearer. And once the Georgia recount is done, and that is very clear, you've got Arizona, you've got Georgia, and Pennsylvania had the widest margin of the three of them. All of these lawsuits have been thrown out, found to be frivolous. There's just not any other paths for them to go down. And the states are going to certify their election results by the end of the first week of December, which isn't far away at all.

and then they have to get them all in by December 23rd. And of course, that is way too long to wait for the GSA to allow access to the Biden transition team to save lives during the pandemic. So I'm hopeful it could be before. I just think it is getting more and more clear that there's no other paths. And at some point, they're going to have to allow for this transition. It's so funny because it's like as a woman politician, there's been so much sexist talk about women being too emotional. and being too sensitive. And then we have an entire party held hostage by the president's moods.

Exactly. I think it was John Bolton that said that we just don't have time to live through seven stages of the president's grief. That is exactly what's happening. And I had seen his individual tweets, of course, like everyone else. But I took a moment yesterday to just look at the feed. And it's just one false lie with Twitter having to live. label them after another about the election. And I have this image of him sitting in his room, in his robe, I made that up, I don't know, and watching TV, watching Fox News, and then tweeting,

well, people are dying in my state at record numbers and the entire Star Tribune obituaries accepted through our whole local coverage on Sunday. They couldn't let me fit any other news stories. And so even when presidents have lost elections, this has been true through history, they have led. They have had to deal with last-minute crises and things that happen. And this guy is not doing it. I don't think we should be surprised. But the fact that he is not leading and trying to demolish our democracy at the same time and tarnish the reputation of good people like Chris Krebs is just an unbelievable trio of evil.

But at the same time, I don't think we have a choice but to say we have won this election. Biden's putting together a tremendous team of those 13 experts, including Michael Osterholm from Minnesota. And we are moving ahead. And I will say the one saving grace in Congress right now is there's more and more discussions about a pandemic package. I just got off the briefing on Operation Warp Speed and nearly all the senators were on it. I was the first one with the question about how we were, you know, going to be able to get the facilities out to freeze these vaccines and to make sure that they're effective when they get out there. But there is bipartisan efforts and we're going to have to put a new pandemic package together. There's no doubt about it with small businesses failing at a rate of 800 a day according to Yelp.

I mean, I have many topics I want to discuss with you that are close to my heart because I'm sober and I went to Hazelden 20 to 20. 23 years ago. So I have, Minnesota is very much a part of my DNA, but I'm also a participant in the vaccine trial. Oh, I didn't know. Yeah. In the Pfizer trial, and I was at Pfizer two days ago because they're doing a documentary on it. And we were talking about just the mechanics, because I've become friendly with some people who work there now of like the distribution. And I'm curious to know, how worried are you about this? Because this is a complicated vaccine.

Oh, it is. And it's good that there's other ones coming out as well, just because so many people need to be vaccinated, like the entire world. And so I think that this has happened so quickly in America and our researchers and our scientists and our companies have come together is incredible. But I think one of the reasons so many people who voted for Donald Trump before didn't vote for him this time was because they knew how much he had botched the testing and how much he botched getting out the protective equipment. And so for me, at some point, this gets out of the hands of scientists and into the land of distribution and making sure the resources are there and that the, airplanes and the trucks can bring this to market that we make sure we don't leave out hard-pressed populations or rural areas that are going to have very small hospitals in the middle of cornfields. And so that's going to be a big part of this. And that's why I think this is

so critical that the transition team can get up and running. Because literally, as you look at the timelines here and they're talking about getting initial doses out, as you know, in January and February and then expanding at rapid speed after that, we've got to have a distribution system in place. So that's what I think is the big issue. I think that also remember a lot of these are two vaccines. You're going to need two vaccines. And so that becomes also collecting the data, making sure people get the same two vaccines at the right period of time. This is a big public health management issue. I think it's all very exciting. And I think that we need a decent person in charge, which is Joe Biden. But we also need

plans in place of how we're going to do this and that people have understanding what's going on instead of stories about swallowing bleach and everything. So it doesn't go. Oh, one more thing. One more thing. Public education campaign so that people make sure they know the vaccine is safe and it's effective. It

looks like it's going to be, especially the one you got, I guess. I don't know if you got a placebo or less. Yeah, we'll see. That is supposed to be, you know, 90% effective in those numbers. And so we still have a number of people that are doubting this vaccine. And that's got to be one of the Republican centers

asked about that today in a good way. We've got to be able to get a public information campaign out there. Yeah. Like, it feels like that Mitch has really gridlocked. I mean, just from the outside in the media, that Mitch has really gridlocked a lot of legislation. How worried are you about being able to pass stuff now? Well, very worried because I listen

to the words of Jerome Powell, the head of Trump's head of the Federal Reserve, who's been really forthright. And he said it would be tragic if we didn't pass something now. And that's because you want to be, when you get to the day after tomorrow, which as I call the time after the pandemic, you want to have not lost 10, 20 percent of your economy and all these startups that have been in a slump and slowed down. And so that's why getting it done now. What do I point to as reasons we might get it done? Well, the fact that we could see an economic collapse in part of the economy, not the whole economy. The fact that we're seeing spiking, spiking rates with no end in sight in a lot of the rural areas and states represented by Republicans,

the fact that state and local governments are crying out for help, that we're seeing record numbers of the disease spread with hospital workers and health care workers so they can't come into work. There's just so many factors. And just based on discussions with my colleagues, which I won't reveal on your podcast as much as that would be. I don't think of health matters to name out Republican senators, but a bunch of them who do want to move forward. So, and the public statements of Biden. Remember, Mnuchin was already negotiating the Treasury Secretary with Speaker Pelosi,

and she met them halfway and had a compromise bill that was halfway between the Republican Senate and the initial Democratic House bill. So I just think as long as people are able to come in safely and vote, which is a whole other story, I am hopeful that we could move forward on something because waiting until Biden comes in and then it's able to pass something. He won't be sworn in until January 20th. And then you'd have to back that. That just means the money won't go out until March, right? At the same time that we want to be getting all these freezers all over the place because not everything is going to be able to be stored underground in Minnesota Sugar Beatfield. There's just going to be a lot of expense in this.

Yeah. We had Rick Bright on the podcast, and he's like one of my favorites. And he's now on this transition, this COVID transition. And he was saying, I heard him speak somewhere else, and he was sort of concerned that there is no vaccine. The Trump administration really has no vaccine plan. Well, one of several of our questions were about the funding for rolling it out. And the plan seems to be a lot based. There are CDC guidelines of.

who gets it first in the healthcare workers. But then there'll be a lot of discretion given to governors. And to me, you need that, but you also need to have a major plan of a way, mass production of not just the vaccine, but how you get the vaccine to market, basically, and how you get the data shared between the states. There's all kinds of things that has to happen.

And to me, as someone that likes government when it works best, this is a puzzle that we can put together, but not if the Biden team does not have access and can't hire their people and get them bedded and get the security clearances so they can start working on it because there are people within the bowels of the Trump administration. We all know this that are just trying to do their jobs. And they are more than willing to work with the incoming Biden people, including clearly Dr. Fauci on how we can make this work. Because it's going to be in the hands of the Biden team to actually administer this vaccination.

And if Donald Trump wants to go out with any credibility when it comes to having pushed the vaccine to be developed, he's got to allow for this transition to happen now. Credibility. There you go. I thought I was trying to use a spirit instead of a stick. The idea is that one of the things he wants to focus on and could focus on is the fact that he pushed this vaccine. So come on. then make it work and then get the transition going. As someone who's a feminist and a writer,

I watched the presidential campaigns and I got a lot of information on how our media treats women in politics. None of it made me feel so good. But I'm curious to know what you learned from your presidential run that you'll take with you that was sort of interesting. Well, there's a lot that I learned, but I think part of it was just the people, running in this particular primary, when history looks back at it, I think we're devoted to our

nation and the unity of our party. And that goes from me to Bernie. It was, yeah, we had debate. That was important. Some of them got, you know, like any debate, people get under each other's skin. But in the end, people rose to the occasion. And that was a lot of when Pete and I endorsed Vice President Biden, you know, even though I'd come in third in the New Hampshire primary, not to go over that again and actually beat him there. I decided, as Pete did, and as so many, how Bernie handled it, how Bernie handled the debates, actually, with Vice President Biden, that at some point that the country came first and unity came first. And I think you saw that throughout the campaign, including so many Republicans and the Lincoln Project and people like John Kasich and Cindy McCain,

who rose above it all and said, John McCain's words, there's nothing more liberating than something larger than yourself. And that's what this fight was. That's what this campaign was. That is so great. And I'm just so impressed. One more thing I had fun. It was two things, little takeaways from the primary.

One, it was very cool on the first day. We doubled the number of women that had ever been on the primary stage on the first debate in a U.S. history. And I think people were able to see women candidates, including my friend Kamala, who was about to become the first woman vice president. They were able to see that we were different. We looked different. We wore different clothes. We came from different places and we had different views.

You know, we didn't just have one woman on the stage and we debated each other. I thought that was really important. And then I think getting the words out that not everyone in our party embraces one set monolithic view as much as they wanted it to seem that way in the general election. And that was me, you know, having some disputes with my friend Bernie over health care for the future. or whether or not we should have free college for everyone. I didn't agree with that. And I thought those debates were really important.

So, Amy, a lot of us are concerned about how much power Facebook wields right now. You know, this isn't concerned in the Susan Collins way. They have their hands on so many levers that seem so obvious that they can affect so many different things. I'm curious, since you've been outspoken about this, what you plan to do about their antitrust and a Biden administration. I hope a lot, and not just Facebook. I kind of look at this in Big Forest and then further down. Big Forest is our antitrust laws haven't been updated. I lead the Democratic lead on that subcommittee.

There is some Republican support for moving forward. The courts have made it harder and harder, and we're seeing more consolidation across the board. Over time, we updated our antitrust laws. The founding fathers, part of the whole Boston Tea Party was about not being dependent on one tea company out of a great, written known. And John Sherman, the Sherman Act was a Republican Senator from Ohio. So we need to update these. Secondly, go down the next level tech. It's not just Facebook. It's Google. I was very pleased that the suit was brought actually by the Justice Department, even though it was near the end. It didn't seem political. It was the right thing to do. What's been happening is these companies

are now, several of them over a trillion dollars have been buying what Mark Zuckerberg called in one of his emails, nascent competitors. He says, these businesses are nascent, but if they grow to a huge scale, they could be very disruptive to us, to a large scale. They could be very disruptive to us. And then he goes out and buys WhatsApp, he buys Instagram. And so there are some serious antitrust issues here that the FTC is looking into at this very moment. So my questions of him were about that. We also have the issue, of course, of algorithms. And for anyone that wants civic debate, their algorithms, they get more money. The more you stay on.

And the more you stay on is dictated by how they send out content that is, of course, on the far end horrible hate speech, but very, very disruptive and very extreme. That gets them our views. And so that is a problem because it's not transparent. And then finally, of course, political ads and some of the misinformation that's been allowed to go out there. And so I took that on early on with John McCain and Mark Warner. I lead the bill called the Honest Adz Act.

And I actually got Lindsay to take John's place when we lost John. And that bill just says they got to follow the same rules the TV does. And that's you've got to have disclaimers and disclosures. Right now that again, those bills have been stopped by Mitch and stopped by the White House. But we simply can't have a situation where billions of dollars are spent on political. ads on one platform and they have rules and then another one which is social media companies and they don't even though Facebook is now trying to enforce it themselves with some errors being made clearly and they say they support the bill but nothing has been done to get it to move so that's what's happened

I just I think you cannot take away the fact that we're in a startup slump and they're basically killing off their competitors by buying them making it hard to access platforms and my last thing I'll say one of my favorite things was Jack Dorsey was on from Twitter and they had bought Vine and they he said at the hearing there's just so much news going on and no one noticed that it's very difficult to access the platform at Facebook so they were basically he was taking it on in his own mellow way the fact that Facebook has made it hard for many small companies who just want access to their platform to get that access and that's also another way that they've engaged in what I call exclusionary conduct and the law calls exclusionary conduct. So I'm pretty excited about this.

I've actually writing a book about antitrust. I know you're cool. No, we're into it. Yeah, well, it'll come out next to it. That's great. Thank you so much. This was so amazing. We really appreciate you. Look forward to being on again. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover at all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday.

But listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com to become a Beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com. So Molly Jungfast, I'm curious. As you know, and as I love to remind our listeners, state,

state and federal law and international treaty law requires us in each and every episode to provide America with a segment we call Fuck That Guy. Yes. And while today has provided a rich portfolio of Fuck That Guy targets, I'm curious which ones are yours today. Today my Fuck That Guy is Democrats. It had to happen once. Whoa! Diane Feinstein and Gavin Newsom who did not follow any COVID restrictions. DiFi's wandering around without a mask. And she's a million years old. She's living dangerously.

I'll tell you that. She really is. I mean, you know, she's 8,000 years old. She has just recently got reelected. Okay, sure. And she's not wearing a mask. When she's not hugging Lindsay Graham, she is not wearing a mask. And then complimenting Amy Comey on her family.

She's not wearing a mask. and then also Gavin Newsom who went and had a dinner with no masks, and then there were lots of photographs. So they are My Fuck That guys. If you guys want to be Democrats, you got to, you know, walk the walk here, too. Who is your Fuck That Guy? My Fuck That guy consists of Mike Shirky of the Michigan Senate and Lee Chatfield also of the Michigan Senate.

Mike and Lee will be flying to Washington tomorrow, and they'll stay in the Beirkyy. beautiful Watergate Hotel before they visit Donald John Trump at the White House. They are part of this situation. These knuckleheads are coming to D.C. at Trump's invitation to do the quiet part loud and talk to him about their conspiracy to try to flip Michigan back to Donald Trump by electoral and legislative fuckery. How would they even do that?

Mike Shirky and Lee Chatfield, I want you to know, Mike, since you're reachable at You speak that out. That's his official phone number, by the way. That's a public record. If you were to call the Michigan legislature, dear listeners, in the Senate, you could reach Mike Shirky and Lee Chatfield's offices and express your feelings to them in a clear and way. You're not going to let me have any fucking fun today.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, we're the worst. So, yes, there's no way they can do anything, right? All right. Let me just say this. Well, readers, what you didn't hear was a long, long series of beeps and objections from Jesse and Molly, because they wouldn't let me give you Mike Shirky. Phone number.

Of the Michigan Senate. And Lee Chatfield of the Michigan House, both of which are easily Googlable. They wouldn't let me have any fun today and give me their phone numbers or their home addresses or their email addresses or the pen code to Mike Shirky. bank account. Yes, we didn't let him do that. That was terrible. It really was terrible. Probably a good move, all in all. Probably the lawyers are breathing a sigh of relief. But fuck these people, okay? Both of them are coming here because they are going to conspire in broad daylight to commit an act of sedition with this president to try to steal the election. Now, can they do it? No. Are they going to make it happen? No. Is it one more corrosive act? And these people are going to

someday run for higher office, they're going to ask the people of Michigan to trust them to be in Congress or the Senate or governor. And I hope folks remember, these are people willing to burn this fucking country down to the ground to please Donald Trump. So they can, they're on my fuck that guy list for today. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow

us on Twitter, I'm Molly Jongfest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Dailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscribe. subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline head to the dailybeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.